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(Australia's Defence Minister) Fitzgibbon quits Defence (corruption allegations)
news.com.au ^ | 4th June 2009

Posted on 06/03/2009 9:55:21 PM PDT by naturalman1975

DEFENCE Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has resigned from his portfolio. Mr Fitzgibbon resigned after it was revealed that he had instructed an Army general to meet with a US Insurance company, of which his brother Mark is an employee, Sky News reports.

Major-General Paul Alexander, who is in charge of defence health services, told a parliamentary committee that staff of a junior minister and defence staff told him to attend the meetings with Mark Fitzgibbon, the chief executive of insurer NIB Health.

The resignation comes after revelations of the meeting was made during a Senate Estimates hearing last night.

“Having read through the proceedings (of a committee hearing), I decided to thoroughly examine the nature of the contact,” Mr Fitzgibbon reportedly wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Mr Rudd said that Mr Fitzgibbon handed in his resignation at 1pm (AEST) today.

In a letter to Mr Rudd, Mr Fitzgibbon said to protect the integrity of the Government, he had decided to resign as defence minister effective immediately.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...


TOPICS: Australia/New Zealand; Breaking News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: australia; defence; fitzgibbon; joelfitzgibbon; minister

1 posted on 06/03/2009 9:55:21 PM PDT by naturalman1975
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To: naturalman1975

Initially, that seems a pretty innocuous request if the brother isn’t in upper management.


2 posted on 06/03/2009 11:08:08 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (The UN has never won a war, nor a conflict, but liberals want it to rule all militaries.)
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To: ConservativeMind

If it was just the one incident, he’d have weathered it.

But this is the third significant ‘semi-scandal’.

Any of them by themselves were survivable. All of them together - that changes things.


3 posted on 06/03/2009 11:16:32 PM PDT by naturalman1975 ("America was under attack. Australia was immediately there to help." - John Winston Howard)
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To: naturalman1975

You don’t muck around with Michael Savage.


4 posted on 06/04/2009 4:52:20 AM PDT by Flint
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To: Flint

What’s Savage’s involvement in this?


5 posted on 06/04/2009 6:34:28 AM PDT by randog (Tap into America!)
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To: Fred Nerks; AdmSmith; Berosus; Convert from ECUSA; dervish; Ernest_at_the_Beach; george76; ...
resigned after it was revealed that he had instructed an Army general to meet with a US Insurance company, of which his brother Mark is an employee

6 posted on 06/04/2009 9:43:13 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/__Since Jan 3, 2004__Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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